


Talk (Like Real People Do)

by chuplayswithfire, smokingbomber



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: F/F, M/M, Multi, Senshi & Shitennou Mini Bang 2020, minor appearances from other characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27317521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chuplayswithfire/pseuds/chuplayswithfire, https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokingbomber/pseuds/smokingbomber
Summary: Zoo AU! MinaRei & JadeMamoUsaThe hardest thing about working at the zoo is the hardest thing about working anywhere else - other people. Minako wanted to reconnect with her wife without getting in her feelings. JJ wanted to pretend being in love with his best friend wouldn't hinder being a part of the wedding party.It might turn out to be a good thing that neither of them gets what they wanted.
Relationships: Aino Minako/Hino Rei, Chiba Mamoru/Jadeite, Chiba Mamoru/Tsukino Usagi
Comments: 51
Kudos: 22
Collections: Senshi & Shitennou Mini Bang 2020, Smokingbomber Arted These





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Senshi & Shitennou Mini Bang 2020! I was partnered with the lovely and wonderful SmokingBomber who created some amazing art for this fic and did double-duty as my beta. As for the fic itself.. honestly, this was supposed to be a romantic comedy. I hope you all enjoy the dramedy this abuse of the prompt 'red' became instead. I listened to a lot of Hozier while writing this one.

The zoo was a special place, a microcosm of the entire planet and all its varying biomes. The animals there were ambassadors for their kind, brought together to inspire in humans a love for their native environments and their very survival. Each day, zoos the world over welcome hundreds, if not thousands, of guests, and each day it changes lives. But in addition to the general mission of education, many zoos, and many animals within zoos, have a second, even more meaningful mission:

To preserve endangered species and help them grow, to one day return to the wild.

For some species, this was an easy task - when given a safe environment, one capable of satisfying their needs, most animals were perfectly satisfied with getting to the business of procreation. Others, however…

"Zoos can try for years without getting a single pregnancy from a red panda," The words came from Minako Aino, the newly established curator of Angel Grove Zoo's South and Southeast Asia Region. Her office, covered in stacks of paperwork, books, a variety of little statues and figurines, and a delicate tower of used coffee cups, did not betray the novel state of her position. "We've just started expanding our conservation efforts. Don't you think we should go with something a little easier to get going? Like, oh, deer! The Père David's Deer is _critically_ endangered, and the Bronx Zoo has a special focus on Grand Cayman iguanas - I'm sure we could arrange some trading in the interest of diversifying."

Her voice was bright, cheerful even, the smile on her face as enthusiastic as her bright blue eyes. Only someone who knew her very well would spot the mischief pinching the corners of her mouth and crinkling her eyes.

Rei Hino would usually count among that number. _Usually_ . Today, the veterinarian missed those signs completely, her hands clenched in loose fists at her hip, manicured nails reflecting the harsh fluorescent lights that have yet to be replaced. The bundle of papers held tight in one of those hands crackled ominously. Her brow was creased with annoyance, her tone sharp with it when she responded, "Did you forget that a quarter of our exhibit animals are ungulates in herd conditions? You're the one so concerned about raising our conservation profile - Père David's deer may be critically endangered, but they aren't going to _stand out_. Red pandas are the better option."

"Oh ho ho, this is interesting. You know, usually _I'm_ the one arguing about marketing and publicity, and _you're_ the one pointing out that we should put the individuals first, but here we are having a role-reversal! You know, I think this is all because of that secret soft side you've been hiding -"

 _"Secret soft side?_ "

"Mmmmhm. It's because they're so darn cute, isn't it?" The corners of Minako's mouth lifted higher, tugging at the seams of her professional facade. 

Rei didn't miss it that time. 

"Are you - teasing me?" The tone of her voice cracked up an octave in sheer outrage. The crackling papers crumbled together. "Minako Aino I am serious about this -"

"What all would we need to do to convert the pangolin habitat to one suitable for a pair of red pandas? Your proposal notes that the spacing and general foliage will suit their needs, and it's true that their dietary needs would be pretty much at negligible additional cost for our budget, but there's a significant need for climbing space when it comes to their territory. What are your suggestions? A cat tower won't cut it, trust me."

The words were delivered with such crisp, clear confidence, that Rei didn't even bother to complete her threat. Frustration wafted from her like the first hints of smoke before fire. One of the hands at her hip rose to her forehead, long fingers kneading at her temple. 

"I hate that you say that like you're speaking from experience. I _know_ you're just trying to distract me with science." 

"You say that, but knowing isn't going to stop you from giving me an answer, is it?" The wide grin that spread across the blond's face could no longer be contained. She leaned back in her chair, fingers curled over the edge of her arm rests. "Come on. Let's hear the details on what we still need to do. It just better take less than a month, because the Smithsonian is not going to be happy if we don't have everything ready in exactly… thirteen days."

You could have heard a pin drop in the quiet that falls in that moment. 

"The Smithsonian," Rei said, a world of questions, but also a single very specific question, contained within that simple recitation. 

Minako rose to the bait. "I received tentative approval from them - and Serenity - two weeks ago. They'll want to confirm habitat appropriateness after the work is done, of course, but your report is ten for ten in every category, not that anyone expected anything else, and it will go a long way to silencing the concerns anyone here might want to raise. And it's not like anyone who knows you doesn't know your opinion on the subject -"

"Two weeks ago." The frustration - no, the feeling was audibly stronger than that - the _anger_ was more obvious in her voice this time, the word bitten off. 

Minako's smile dropped. 

"Yyyeeeessssss?" She drew the syllable out, aware that she's gone wrong somewhere, and utterly lost as to when, where, and how, scrambling for time. "You're ah, doing that 'absolute minimum amount of words' thing. I think we've talked about that before, you know, all of us, you, staff social, the uh, scary vibe?"

"You've known for two weeks that this had the go ahead. That means you put in this request two, three months ago. You opened the floor for submissions _two_ _weeks_ ago. What was the point of that - and of wasting the time and patience of everyone who bothered to put together one of these reports - if you already knew what you wanted? What was the point of asking _me_ to give my ideas if you had already decided _you_ knew what I would recommend?" Rei shook her head, just once, the sharp gesture flicking her long black hair to the left as she turned on her heel. The disapproval on her face carved sharp lines into her profile. "I participated in this because _you_ asked me to. Because _you_ said it was important. And you didn't even respect me enough to not make a joke out of it."

The wheels of Minako's chair creaked as she jumped to her feet; the back of it collided with the wall behind her desk from the force of the motion. Neither woman noticed.

"Rei, wait -"

"I have two surgeries lined up for today, Minako, and a host of details to review in between. But I'll be sure to have the details on your desk by the end of the week. We wouldn't want to waste _your_ efforts on this."

And then she was gone, out the door before anything else could be said. Minako stared after her, mouth open, voiceless. 

Rei was long gone by the time she finally managed to utter, "What just happened?"

🦊♥️🐼

"And I just don't know where it all went wrong!" 

The place was Angel Grove Zoo staff lounge four. The time was one-thirty in the afternoon. The speaker was one Minako Aino, currently pressing her forehead to the lukewarm red plastic of the lunch table and lamenting her misery to her captive audience of one. 

"Really. You have absolutely no idea where this convoluted scheme involving deceiving Rei went wrong."

Her captive audience was one Jeremy 'JJ' Jones, present zookeeper, former peer, forever wingman. 

Minako scowled, her face buried in her arms. "When you say it like that you make it out like it was an obviously bad idea from the start!"

"Yes," JJ deadpanned. "I wonder why I could be implying that."

"JJ this isn't helpful! You're supposed to be sympathizing! You're supposed to be encouraging!"

"Really?" He asked, his voice lifting with mock surprise. "Man, and here I thought I was supposed to be having lunch."

"You can do that any day. You can do that _every_ day! Today, I am asking for just a little bit of comfort, because I -"

"Made a really bad choice in playing a stupid game with Rei, didn't listen to me when I said she would definitely hate it, and now won a stupid prize because you didn't just talk to your wife like a normal person?"

Minako sat back and stared, brows knit with annoyance, arms crossed. She was silent for long enough that JJ started to shift around in his seat in discomfort and after another long moment, stabbed a fork into the crappy cafeteria macaroni salad he'd grabbed to go with his lunch to disguise his unease. Still, she was silent, her gaze heavy with the weight of expectation you could only expect from someone who's been your lunch room bitching buddy for seven years and counting. 

"What?!" He demanded eventually, giving up the high ground in favor of breaking the stalemate. 

"I'm just wondering how someone who's been pining after his best friend for like _ten whole years_ can really sit back and tell me I should just talk to someone about my feelings," she said finally, her voice light with innocent curiosity. 

It was fake. She was fake. This did not stop JJ from pressing a hand to his chest and acting like he'd been shot, an expression of exaggerated pain sweeping his expression. "Wow. You're just hitting me right in the heart, Mina, just right in the heart."

"Hey, I'm just saying, it's a little hypocritical don't you think?"

"No, I don't," JJ huffed, cheeks puffed out like he was thirteen instead of thirty, and Minako's face split open in a terrible grin. 

"You don't think? Actually, that does check out -" she started, only to shriek with surprise and disgust as JJ retaliated, blowing the contents of his milk carton out at her through a straw. "Ew! Ew, stop, that's disgusting, JJ - "

"I'm sorry Minako," JJ interrupted, because now he was taking the role of lying liar. He used the straw to flick the milk instead, so he could talk and horrify her at the same time. Minako remembered, not for the first time, that he had sisters, and spared a second to sympathize with them for having to grow up with him. "Apparently I can't think, which means my brain really can't process anything you're saying right now so I'm going to go ahead and _guess_ that you said 'I am so sorry for comparing the plight of the single soul to my refusal to talk to the woman who already married me for some reason -'"

Actually, that was enough. Minako slapped a hand down against the lunch table, their lunch trays jumping as the vibration rolls through the surface. "She married me because I check every box on the partner list and then some, and you know it. Generous, successful, beautiful, intelligent, funny, ambitious, _wonderful_ in bed, it's all there!"

"Exceeeeept…" JJ drawled, drawing out the syllables for emphasis, "That at this very moment, you're scoring zeroes on communication, transparency, and oh right, maturity, which is three zeros out of ten, making for… oh, I'm sorry Mina, that's just a C average." 

" _A C average_? I'll show you a C average - you know, this was supposed to be a healing vent session, I -"

"Would you say you came to have a good time and now you're feeling attacked?"

It would be unprofessional to scream in frustration at work. So Minako didn't. She just chucked her bread stick at him instead. 

The less said about the ensuing food fight, the better.

🦊♥️🐼

An hour later, JJ was regretting being so flippant. Seated in the cafeteria with a container of jello in hand, it had been easy to tell Minako to just _talk_ to Rei. Communication, after all, is key. Stunts and pranks, misguided gestures, none of that would change the fact that they needed to talk. It wouldn't change the fact that the mortifying ordeal of being known would be worth the relief that came after. 

It was _so much harder_ to actually walk the talk. Especially here. Especially now. 

"So will Pearl be okay to make her debut this time around, or is this looking bad?" Usagi Tsukino was asking. The education specialist wasn't the problem - _she_ was on the other side of the enclosure, offering Pippin a bird biscuit, a pen tucked behind her ear and her abandoned clipboard slowly being stolen by either Sam or Frodo. As their keeper, he really should be better at telling them apart, but Hyacinth Macaws weren't exactly covered in identifying marks, especially tucked down on the ground and working together like those two are. 

He should say something about that. The clipboard would be fine, it was metallic, but the papers, they would be rumpled for sure, if not torn -

His arm was jostled, and the scent of golden sunlight wafted returned as Mamoru leaned in closer, and the thought wisped away into nothing. JJ had never in his life been as grateful to a bird as he was right now, the heady scent of Mamoru's favorite cologne (BPAL 85, Aureus, a birthday gift come back to bite him) filling his nostrils. If it wouldn't be absurdly irresponsible and bad for her health, he'd be offering Pearl her weight in mangoes right now, and for the rest of her life too. The wing she was spreading for him covered his face completely. His unfortunately vivid blush was a secret between the two of them. 

Thank fuck for that, honestly. Mamoru was oblivious, but he wasn't _that_ oblivious. Even he would want to know what about lice was worth blushing over and the last thing JJ wanted was to stumble his way through a lie. 

Mamoru Chiba had been JJ's best friend for twelve years now, and for every last one of those years he'd remained utterly clueless about first the burning attraction, then the passionate crush, and now, the quiet love that JJ's been fostering for him from the second one exceptionally bad week of midterms was made better by a night of shared hot chocolate and cracker candies in their dorm room. He was the best sort of friend a guy could ask for, and he was, unfortunately enough, also the best sort of boyfriend a guy could ask for. 

He was also engaged to his girlfriend of six years, had been for over a month now, and was thus _very firmly_ off the market. 

Now if only JJ's heart would just take the hint, and also a hike. 

"Doesn't look like it," JJ forced himself to say, looking through the gaps in Pearl's feathers at Usagi, rather than get lost in thoughts about Mamoru again. "The only reason this guy would still be face first in her wings is if she really does have lice, and there's a zero percent chance she'll be a good sport for the kids right after a delousing treatment. But Merry and Pippin will still put on a great show. If you want to stick with three birds, I can swap in Frodo for tonight."

"This guy can hear you," Mamoru complained, but the irritation in his voice was feigned, and he drew back from Pearl with a tiny captive held in the tip of his tweezers. "And unfortunately _that_ guy is right. Pearl here has managed to pick up a nasty lice infestation."

"Grosssss," Usagi cringed, shuddering with her whole body. She immediately followed it up with, "Nature is pretty gross though. I bet it would be educational!"

"Oh, it would be. The bitching out Minako and Kamal would give us for pulling a stunt like that would be too. Bird lice might not be able to spread to humans, but on the off-chance some eagle-eyed soccer mom might spot something crawling in her feathers if the delousing doesn't take - or worse, that Pearl decides to get nippy because she's still itchy and surrounded by noisy kids - she'll be spending her night and morning recovering from a delousing, instead of teaching the children." JJ was firm on this, his voice level, his face quickly fixed into a frown. 

It would be a lot more impressive if Pearl hadn't decided to start preening him at that exact moment. Her beak caught on a few of his curls.

Mamoru, traitor that he was, laughed at him. It was a curse of nature that he was even more attractive in his betrayal. 

"As amusing as it would be to explain the importance of inspecting an animal for parasites regularly, he's neglecting to mention the _other_ reason Pearl really will need to miss out: if we don't contain her, and get to work examining the rest of the flock, we'll have an enclosure wide infestation. And then Kamal really would kill us."

"Kill _me_ , more like," JJ corrected, "I'd be a piss poor keeper if I let that happen."

A noise of protest comes from Usagi's direction. The twin-tailed specialist is heading their way, her fingers biscuit-less, her clipboard reclaimed. In her wake are Sam, Frodo, and Pippin, left contentedly munching on those sacrificed biscuits. 

"You can't control the birds getting lice! He wouldn't really blame you for that, would he?"

JJ glances at Mamoru at the exact moment that Mamoru looks towards him. Their eyes locked. 

The snorts are simultaneous. 

"Kamal, hold us all to an unrealistic, but ultimately ideal standard? No, never," JJ shook his head. "He'd have plenty to say about me not noticing our flock getting the itchy-crawlies."

"And he'd have comments about the time that must have lapsed between check ups, that I didn't catch it either," Mamoru added, placing his insect prisoner in a small, sealed bag and putting space between himself and Pearl as the parrot flapped her wings and made it clear that now that he'd moved the tweezers away he wasn't going to have a chance to touch her with them again. "Kamal isn't unreasonable, but he is...exacting. You've worked with him before, haven't you seen it?"

"I've seen him be a total sweetheart," Usagi argued a flash of concern spreading over her face. "But it's okay, I wasn't serious. Of course it's fine to swap in Emerald! I didn't advertise which birds the kids would be meeting, so no one will know, and poor Pearl can get her delicing."

"Delousing," Mamoru corrects, and then shakes his head. "If Kamal's your sweetheart, does that mean I'm just the sweetliver?"

At his side, JJ rolled his eyes, not bothering to hide his disgust. He couldn't _believe_ he was in love with this man. 

Usagi just laughed, blue eyes sparkling with mirth. "That was _awful_. I can't believe I'm marrying you!"

"You love it," Mamoru said, and his voice was warm, and even from a distance JJ could see that his eyes were soft. Back in college, he would have never been so confident, so sure of not just himself, but someone else's love for him. That was why, even if he wanted to resent Usagi for being with him, he couldn't. She didn't just make Mamoru happy - she'd helped him believe he was lovable, as capable of _loving_ as he was of being loved. Moments like these served to remind him of that, and of how good it was that he hadn't followed his own advice. That he hadn't listened to Minako, not even once over the last seven years. That he hadn't told Mamoru how he felt, hadn't confessed his guilt to Usagi, had just let it be. 

It was for the best. At least this way he still had a place in their lives, a simple, easy to box away space, without any messy complications. Plenty of people out there pined for someone they couldn't have, nursed quiet love for their best friend. JJ was content to be one of them.

With that thought in mind, he shifted his hands enough that he could clap without jostling Pearl too badly. If he were anywhere but the Amazoness Forest, he'd just flat out whistle - but with a dozen eager birds in just this enclosure alone, that would be an ear-splitting mistake. 

"Alright you two, come on, let's get back to work. Last I checked we still had half of that checklist to get through, and unlike some people, I like to be out of here by quitting time."

"Since when?" Usagi shot back, but she'd already turned her bright smile towards him. Mamoru was pulling his face from the mush zone of romance, trying (and honestly failing) to get back to professional rather than sappy.

"Since I found out I need to check the whole flock for lice so...eh, five minutes ago? Come on, let's get to it. I promise you won't die if you go an hour without a schmoop injection."

"That seems like a pretty bold claim to make," Mamoru frowned at him, his professional mask pulled back on just enough that anyone who hadn't known him for long would buy that he was serious. "Do you have the evidence to back it up?"

"Oh, totally. You can find an article about it in the Journal of Bofa Life Sciences," JJ replied, straight faced. "There's another one too, in this little known publication titled The New Ligma Journal of Health Sciences…"

The jokes managed to carry them through the rest of the afternoon, as JJ held birds still so Mamoru could inspect them for lice, then lured those unfortunate enough to be afflicted to the backside of the stage (so to speak), where their travel cages waited with bowls of fresh chopped mango as a bribe for their cooperation. Usagi ran them through the itinerary, explaining and re-explaining the themes, activities, and exercises she'd planned, and quizzing them each on the key facts the school board had asked them to touch on to connect the outing with the lessons the kids would be getting in class. 

It was a good way to spend an afternoon, in all honesty, maybe not beating out the sheer dopamine rush of helping an animal finally master a new enrichment task, but warm, enjoyable. It was he three of them, working together and helping each other, and after a while, JJ let himself forget that Mamoru was due to be married in a year, that Usagi was his fiance, that he himself was in love with him. 

It was routine, in the best possible way. 

That was probably why he didn't think twice about it when Usagi peeled away from them early, when she mentioned needing to edit in the final changes to her itinerary, when she picked that bit of paperwork over watching them personally delouse four brightly colored, highly social, _exceptionally_ wriggly birds. 

In fact, it wasn't until they were entirely alone, save for an audience of birds more interested in trying to escape delousing than the antics of a couple of humans, that JJ thought about how odd that was. 

And then Mamoru cleared his throat, and it became abundantly clear that it wasn't odd, it was a trap. 

"Jay," he began, and JJ's stomach dropped. "You've been my best friend for nine years, and we've been through some crazy things together. Midterms and finals, adventures in being first-time cat owners, the Rock Collection Split of 2012 -"

"Saying it like that won't make it a thing," JJ interrupted, some corner of his lizard brain in a flailing panic, recognizing danger in this sentiment. 

Mamoru just rolled his eyes, his expression terribly fond. " _The Rock Collection Split of 2012_ , our graduation, the absolute mess that was my first year at Cornell… we've been through a lot. And you've stuck with me through all of it - and you were there, when Usagi and I proposed to each other, and I would like nothing more than for you to be at my side when we exchange vows."

JJ's chest was tight. He couldn't breathe. 

"Jay, would you do me the honor of being my best man?"


	2. Chapter 2

  * Mina-P: so yeah I just left early I didn't know what to do
  * Mina-P: she's still angry! she won't talk to me about work stuff at all! 
  * Mina-P: she just gave me the folder and didn't even say anything 
  * Mina-P: JJ! Come on! 
  * Mina-P: JJ COME ON TEXT ME BACK
  * Mina-P: JJ YOU'VE BEEN OUT SICK FOR TWO DAYS
  * Mina-P: YOU HAVE YOUR READ RECEIPTS ON I KNOW YOU'RE LOOKING
  * Mina-P: JEFFERSONIAN JONESINGTON IF YOU DON'T TEXT ME BACK I'M BREAKING INTO YOUR HOUSE



The sun was still crawling it's way across the sky, purples and pinks of dawn giving way to the rich yellows and blues of the early morning, and the zoo was already noisy. The click clack of keys being pressed was just one more sound amidst it all, and yet, to Minako, it's the second loudest sound of them all, her own annoyed huffing the only thing louder.

She scowled down at her phone, and the screen full of text messages that have so far gone unanswered. Something had happened, obviously, and she had tried to respect JJ's privacy, give him some space. That was over now - space wasn't fixing it, and reading her messages without _replying_ just means he wanted her to get at him. She _would_ break into his place tonight if he didn’t pick up, and she wouldn’t even bring tequila.

Minako was halfway through typing her next message - 'I KNOW WHERE YOU HIDE THE SPARE KEY' - when three dots appeared at the bottom of the screen, one after the other. Whenever the third flashed onto the screen, they would all disappear so the pattern could begin again. For the first time in days, JJ was typing back. 

She waited. And waited. And - 

Finally, a reply appeared at the bottom of the screen, the sunny little chirp of her ringtone sounding off to announce its arrival.

  * Majerksty: I'm in the office today. I'll see you at lunch. 



There wasn't a follow up text. There wasn't an elaboration. There wasn't even a read receipt on her next message ('You're telling me everything, no objections'). 

"Great," she muttered to herself, sliding her phone into her pocket. "Like _that_ wasn't at all vaguely ominous."

🦊♥️🐼

"My, my, you all will never guess who _I_ saw getting her hands dirty this morning," a lilting voice crowed, the sing-song announcement carried to Rei's ears as the doors to the surgery wing burst open. She was in the midst of scrubbing in for a surgery and rolled her eyes, saying nothing. If she waited someone else in the wing would take the bait.

Elias Maria Marin y Iglesias was one of the four people on the Angel Grove Zoo's veterinary staff that Rei privately considered her team, a brilliant surgeon with hands steady enough to make an angel steam from envy, and a gossipy streak a mile-wide. Usually the red pin tacked to the upturned collar of his shirt would be accompanied by cherry red lipstick painted on plush lips, to signify that today is a 'he' day, but they have surgery, and make up in the operating theater was asking for a bad time. The wicked smile curving those lips didn’t need paint to stand out anyway - someone somewhere had already become today's plaything. He pouted when no one responded, his lips parting - 

Only to shut a second later, as Ami offered a patient, "Who?", patiently proving Rei's gut right. 

She was on the right side of the sink, her arms soaked and soaped to the elbow, watching Elias rather than her hands, blue eyes bright with curious amusement. That was no surprise to Rei - Ami Mizuno-Meioh was the biggest gossip hound Rei has ever known, and it was only her calm, disinterested demeanor that's allowed that little fact to go unnoticed. Most of their colleagues thought she was just being polite when she played along with the song and dance Elias demanded before he would give up any of his latest gossip, but Rei knew the truth. It would be difficult not to - a person could hardly share an apartment with someone for two years without picking up on some of their deep, dark secrets.

Rei's had been a crush on her now-wife. Ami's was her habit of hoarding gossip, of piecing together the puzzle pieces that made up the lives of her friends, co-workers, acquaintances, the guy at the coffee shop - 

The point being she wasn't surprised that Ami bites. And she _wasn't_ interested in whatever gossip Elias has dug up with those eagle eyes of his today. She was just going to focus on scrubbing in, soaping each finger and getting under each nail, working the soap into a thick lather. It was automatic at this point in her career, something she could do without thinking. 

It freed her mind to wander. 

" _Well_ ," she heard Elias begin distantly, "I was running a tad bit late this morning, as you can oh so unfortunately tell, and as such I decided to be a bit naughty and use Metallia's old parking spot, you know the one, by that quaint little…"

She woke up alone this morning, and it wasn't even much of a surprise. It was their pattern these days, one or both of them waking at the crack of dawn or some other equally odious hour, barely taking the time for a bare bones shower, and then dashing off to work. She couldn't remember the last time she and Minako had woken up in bed together and actually _stayed_ there.

Not that she minded.They were both busy women with responsibilities to look after. It was only natural that there would be periods of time where they didn't see each other as much, where one or both of them were in and out of the house before the other can say good morning, say goodbye, say I love- 

It was only natural. 

Busier than usual, more tired than usual, a little more _irritated_ than usual, not that she was irritated by anything in particular, of course, but - 

"Ruh-eiiiii, I am _talking_ about _you_ , come on now, pay attention. Gossiping about your love life isn't much fun if you're not listening and glaring at me with those cold little eyes of yours~"

Water splashed over the sides of the sink as Rei jolted, startled out of her reverie by the voice now speaking directly into her ear.

"Elias," she snapped, voice low with displeasure, "I don't _care_ about your need to gossip about anything and everything. There's this concept called _personal space_ \- why don't you try and familiarize yourself with that instead?"

But her words might as well have been water washing off the duck's back for all the impact they had. Elias merely laughed, pressing a hand to his chest. 

"Be still my heart, for there it is, that oh so chilling glare. Your eyes are like cold fire when you're angry, Rei. It's almost enough to make an enby question his commitment to men."

"Does your husband know you flirt like this when he isn't around?" Rei groused, regretting it almost immediately.

"Oh, he does. In fact, he has all _kinds_ of thoughts about it. One time -"

"You're oversharing again, Elias," Ami interrupted, a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth as Rei closed her eyes, stiff with the motion of a full body cringe. "Don't you remember that workplace appropriateness seminar?"

"You mean the one you spent making eyes at your wife, Rei spent staring at _her_ wife, and I spent playing footsie with my husband? That workshop on workplace appropriateness?" 

"I both regret and resent being a part of this conversation," Rei interrupted, "Just get to the point Elias. You may have forgotten that we're supposed to be getting ready for a surgery."

"We're getting ready to excise a lump from a baboon's backside," Elias countered, one perfectly sculpted eyebrow lifted derisively. "We've gossiped over far more serious surgeries than that."

The worst part was that Rei couldn't really say that he's wrong - Mamoru had accidentally broken the news of his engagement during an emergency C-section on one of their fishing cats just a month ago and the stress of getting those kittens out had done nothing to stop them from hounding him for all the details.

If they could gossip during _that_ then she was doomed during _this_.

Her slumping shoulders were the wave of a white flag. Elias grinned, pearly whites bared as he handed her a set of latex gloves. His own hands were already gloved, and she wasn't even going to ask when he found the time to wash his hands. She was just going to accept the inevitable.

"Now before you so rudely ignored me, I was saying that you just wouldn't believe who I saw getting her little hands dirty this morning -"

"Was it my wife?" Rei asked resignedly, using her shoulder to shove open the door to the operating theater. 

Ami walked through first, tossing a smile filled with amused sympathy over her shoulder. Elias just nodded, bobbing his head like a terrible little bird as he follows. 

"It absolutely was! There she was with a shovel and dirty gloves in the old pangolin habitat and you know, it's been ages since I saw a sight like that. I mean, it's been what, two months since she got that promotion?"

"Three," was her sigh of correction. Their patient was already lying in wait for them - Vesves, one of the veterinary residents, had him sedated, a gas mask fitted around the baboon's long muzzle. "Thank you for getting him ready, Ves. Do you want to stay and assist with the procedure?"

The young redhead shook her head, a rueful smile blooming over her face. 

"It was no trouble, Dr. Hino. Usually I'd love to stay, but Jun put in a word about one of the beavers having some difficulty eating lately, and we're pretty sure he needs some of his teeth filed. I want to get on that before it gets to be a serious issue."

Elias settled into place across from her, his strawberry blond mane hidden behind a hairnet, the lower half of his face covered with a surgical mask. His scowl at the interrupted story time is communicated regardless. 

Rei ignored him, slotting her hands onto the gas mask so that VesVes could remove her own. 

"That's a good idea. If you do end up needing help, Mamoru is on call for us, and Michiru is on call for the East Side. Don't hesitate to reach out - no procedure is too small for backup."

Her smile was - she hoped - reassuring. It was, judging by the look on Vesves's face, and the younger woman cracked a bright smile as she turned to go. 

"I will - and I'll leave you guys to it - PallaPalla will be coming by to assist with Mr. Bigs' transport later - good luck with the surgery!"

"Only newbies need luck," Elias called back, and laughed when VesVes's response was to flip him the bird without looking back. He wheeled over the equipment for intubation, and Rei rolled her eyes, carefully opening Mr. Big's jaws so that they could shift over to anesthetic by intubation rather than the gas mask. 

They were going to need all hands on deck for surgery - they may have been hoping the tumor was just a harmless lipoma or hemangioma, but there was always the chance that it could be something malignant, and in surgery, it was better to be safe than sorry. 

As soon as the doors swung shut, Elias turned an expectant eye on Rei - both so that she could start the intubation, and so she could encourage his gossip.

"Fine. I'll bite. What did you see my wife doing in the pangolin habitat?"

"And you have to give more detail than working," Ami added, taking the moment to document vital signs and recheck their equipment. "You already said that."

"Well, working is what she was doing. But even though you didn't ask nicely at all, I'll tell you anyway. Now, I know this is a bit of a taboo subject these days, but we do all know that our darling little establishment is receiving a pair of red pandas soon - Rei, you can let go of the mask, I'm ready to insert - and even though lil Missus Minako got that promotion _three_ months ago, there she was, sweating up a storm instead of delegating that to one of her underlings. Padding out the nest boxes, digging up holes for the new climbing structures, replanting the new vegetation - she'll be lucky if Makoto doesn’t kill her for that - in different spots around the exhibit, and every so often she would stop and go back to take a peek at something she had propped up on one of the climbing platforms."

All at once, the purpose of this meandering tale became clear. Rei rolled her eyes upwards for the bare second she was willing to spare for her annoyance, and then busied herself with carefully shaving away the fur obscuring their sight of the growth. 

Despite her pointed silence, Elias continued. His smile didn't dim as he brought the scalpel to their patient's throat and separated the skin to give them access to the growth causing their co-workers so much concern. "Why, it was a _folder_ , my dear friends, a folder that can no doubt have come from an esteemed colleague in this very room, who I will be so thoughtful as to not name, but really Rei -"

"I thought you weren't going to name me," she sighed, suctioning blood to keep the area clear. 

" _But really, Rei_ it's quite romantic, don't you think? Only three months free of the grub and grime and she goes right back to it just to please you."

"To please me."

"To please you! You know, since you're not talking to her."

"Since I'm not _talking_ to her?"

"Oh, are we at the part of the conversation where you just repeat every word I say, to avoid the unfortunate truth of just how well I can read you? Ooh, oh, this one's a bleeder, we can cross lipoma off the list. That means the big C is still a possibility, just like the little C is still on the floor of Minako's office."

That was enough. This was ridiculous. "Put a biopsy down as the next course of action. I am _not_ avoiding a _conversation_ with my wife."

Ami inhaled between her teeth, the suck of air audible in the incredulous silence that follows this declaration. "Rei, we've all noticed. Well - we had to notice, you spent all of Inmahboot's surgery discussing - "

"Ranting, and that's still a terrible name for a rattlesnake," Elias corrected helpfully. 

" _Discussing_ the matter of her unfortunate flop of a romantic overture. It's obvious you were upset."

"Of course I was upset! It was a waste of valuable time, it was juvenile, it was -"

"Extremely cute, but admittedly poorly considering in regards to your feelings. Be careful, you're going to have to get right against the external jugular to excise that -"

"He's doing fine, saying that's just going to make him nervous, and more importantly, you can't agree with both of us Ami. I know you've already picked a side, and it had better not be his," Rei scowled behind her surgical mask, leaning in to adjust her grip on the forceps to keep the skin open. "Since you're in there, and those nodes are as swollen as we expected, you should go ahead and take one out. I've got a container for it, and we're going to have Mr. Bigs under examination all week anyway, we should make sure we don't have to put him under again soon."

"I am not picking a side, because the only side I'm on is the one where all my friends are happy and masquerading as well adjusted adults -" Rei and Elias snorted in unison and then paused, staring at each other for a second over their patient. Ami dutifully ignored them. "However, I have to admit that it's been several days since any of us last saw you speaking with Minako."

"I can't believe this. I am _not_ avoiding my wife! Have you considered that we've just been busy these last _two_ days? That we've been -"

"Rei, darling, we're in the business of surgery, not lying. Look, you can trust us! We'd only mock you in a fun, friendly way, and you know that. But you two are just very stubborn, and we'd hate to see you put your pride before your pussy."

🦊♥️🐼

"Look, just tell me what's going on so I can tell you what to do to feel better and you can tell me what to do to feel better and we can both ignore each other's advice in favor of being miserable but at least we talked it out a little, okay?"

The words were accompanied by the clatter of plastics as Minako dropped her tray on the lunch table. Her burger wobbled held together only by the paper it was still wrapped in, a lone bite puncturing its otherwise perfect burger shape. Her small carton of fries that weren't so fortunate - it now lay on its side, half of its contents spilled across the surface of the tray, some just barely remaining _on_ the tray. In her hand was a milkshake, the only piece of her meal spared the havoc.

Her expression was unimpressed, brows knit together, lips pursed in disapproval, a glimmer concern the only thing softening bright blue eyes. 

JJ dropped his head down to his crossed arms and offered a muffled groan in reply.

"I don't speak whale," Minako said. "You're really going to need to speak up."

Another, even longer groan. He was pressing his luck and he knew it, but JJ just couldn't bring himself to say the words, to make it even more real than it already was. It was stupid - Mamoru's been engaged for thirty-seven days already, and he hasn’t gotten _more_ engaged, it was just. 

Just.

A piteous whine rose from his throat as he pressed his head down, sliding it off his forearms and against the warm plastic of the table. He wished he could melt into the ground and be one with the dirt. It wasn’t like he could feel any lower.

"You're going to make me guess, aren't you?" Minako askd, but she wasn't really asking and they both knew it. She continued without skipping a beat, as if to affirm that very fact. 

"It's not an emergency, you know, a medical emergency, because you're always awfully calm about those. And it's not a job emergency, because I'd know. Kamal can't keep secrets from me, he doesn't have a poker face."

This was such an enormous lie that even in the depths of his misery, JJ couldn't let it go unremarked. The tone of his whale-bleating - his groaning - took on a distinctly disbelieving note. 

Minako ignored him. It wasn't her fault that lesser beings continued to find her fellow curator a man of enigma. He had a cat, for goodness sake. A fat persian cat he'd named Mimi and put on a harness for the sole sake of allowing her to sit in his _herbal garden_ with him. The man was neither cool nor a mystery, he was a _father_ , full of so much dad energy it was amazing he hadn't managed to sprout a child from his forehead like Zeus birthing Athena. That he hasn't adopted already is surely only because Elias would rather a full year of marriage before they start adding a child to the mix.

"Which means this must be a romance thing. And seeing as if you'd managed to have gay feelings for -" she's interrupted by an indiginant grunt, "Right, right, if you managed to have bi feelings for anyone but Mamoru you'd be rubbing years of taunting in my face right now, so it's got to be about Mamoru. What did he do now?"

It's important to note here that Minako doesn't dislike Mamoru. As her best friend's fiance, she was even rather fond of him. But it was a fact that his sheer obliviousness, combined with JJ's complete disregard for the concept of communication, had led to many a drunken night of commiseration and sympathy between JJ and Minako, back before she was married and even after, just about every time he forgot that he was supposed to be 'happy and content' about pining. There were only so many years of sympathizing a friend had in her before she descended into the haze of ' _just tell him already_ '.

A mumble answered her, one she didn't try to understand. 

"JJ, just speak up."

Another, louder mumble. 

This time, Minako used the skills that three years of sorority life taught her, and grabbed him by the back of his hair, idly dragging his head up. JJ yowled like a kicked cat, less out of pain than offended shock. The look on his face spelled out his inner dialogue. _You drag JJ? Drag him like the dishrag? Jail! Jail for Minako!_

"Don't give me that, you knew what you were in for. Come on, what did he do? I'll drop you into my burger, just try me." She shook his head by the hair, just enough to make it clear she'd carry out her threat, burger sacrifice be damned. 

There was nothing more he could do. No other way to put this off. 

Well, he could have burst into tears, which a part of him very much wanted to do and was entirely ready for, but which would have also been the icing on the cake of this conga line of horrible human feelings.

"He… he asked me to be his best man."

 _"_ Oh _shit_ ," Minako said, with feeling. 

🦊♥️🐼

Ten hours later, there were drinks. There were so many drinks. There was a bottle of tequila that JJ was sure he didn't pay for, but which was kind and generous and capable of filling many shot glasses. The proof littered the table in front of JJ. Once again, his forehead rested against a table, this time for a very different reason.

"I just want to hug my wife!!!"

Across the bar, Minako was on the karaoke stage, a microphone in her hand, the upbeat music to some peppy love song going ignored as she screamed to the beat of her heart. 

"I just want him to be _happy_ ," JJ sobbed into the table, utterly alone. The bottle of tequila and the ringing in his ears were his only friends. Over at the stage, someone was trying to coax Minako down, even as a dozen drunken sad sacks also called out to hug their (possibly non-existent) wives. "Why can't he be happy with _me_ ? I would make him mochi every day! I would dye his gray hairs he doesn't want anyone to know about! Why can't _I_ have a stupid sexy Mamoru?"

Why couldn't Mamoru have a twin, and then Usagi could have fallen in love with that twin, and then he would be in love with JJ, and they would be engaged and getting _married_ , but no, there's no twin and no marriage for him and he is going to be alone forever and anthropologists will dig up his lonely remains and label him subject _sad_. 

He's deep in this thought hole, putting names and personalities to the imaginary people who uncover his remains and the papers they would write about his obviously lonely bones, when the table thuds and his good friend tequila rattles with it. Only the swift and uncoordinated action of JJ's waving hand saves the bottle, with just one lonely shot glass left to shatter against the floor instead. Fare thee well friend, you served bravely. 

The origin of that thud was Minako, whose hand was flopping across the table like a dying fish, flailing around in search of salvation (alcohol). JJ was a nice person, even in the depths of utmost misery, and that was the only reason he found it within himself to sacrifice friend tequila to her grabby-hands act. 

If he were less drunk, he would remind her that they have work tomorrow. If he were less miserable he would remind her that they have three early morning meetings back to back. 

But JJ was both extremely drunk and extremely miserable, and so all he did was fumble through pouring himself another shot when she was done. 

"I really wanna kiss my wife," Minako mumbled. Her words were slurred and lisped from the way her face was mashed into the table. "But she hates me and she's never going to kiss my face again an' it's all because of the pandas."

Even drunk, that was clearly and completely incorrect. "She married you."

"And she's going to _leave_ me." Minako insisted. 

"But she married you," JJ insisted right back, chest tight and eyes hot and relentlessly smushing his face into the table because how did she not _get it_.

Minako's voice rose to a wail, miserable and loud enough to drown out the schmuck who'd taken over the karaoke stage after her with ease. "But she's _mad_ at me and I haven't hugged her in so long and she didn't kiss me all day and what if she never kisses me again?"

JJ couldn't possibly see her, not with his face against the table, and that's good, because a million little pieces are all flying together again, all around him, the heaviness in his chest and the tightness of his breath and the heat behind his eyes all coalescing into one simple thought process. 

Mamoru's never kissed him. 

Mamoru's never going to kiss him.

Mamoru is getting married and he's never going to kiss JJ or hug him like partners do or, or -

"He's never going to _hold my hand_ ," and unfortunately (or fortunately), JJ had no recollection of what happened after that. 

🦊♥️🐼

The facts were thus: at three in the morning the bartender kicked them out. This hardly being the first time they'd gotten too shitfaced to make their way home from this bar, there was a cab waiting for them at the corner. Between JJ and Minako, there was always at least half of a single, struggling brain cell, and with it they must have managed to give the poor driver his address with minimal shenanigans. Even more miraculously, they had then managed to get up the stairs and into his apartment without dying, injuring themselves, or bothering his neighbors so much that they called the police.

Those were the objective facts, as evidenced by the time on their bar receipt, the cab receipt in Minako's email, and the way he woke up on his bedroom floor, still in yesterday's clothes and with a headache fit to wake the dead. 

The subjective facts were these:

It was far too early in the morning, his alarm clock was far too loud, and he was far too hungover to be dealing with any of this. 

"Minako. Angel. Light of my life sent from on high -"

The crunch of something plastic and breakable colliding with walls incredibly used to abuse echoed through the apartment. The piercing chime of the alarm died unmourned.

"I love you," JJ sighed with utter relief. Warmth blossomed in his heart, his dear friend a reminder that there was beauty in the world.

"I know you do. Now get up and drink this raw egg and kale smoothie with me, before I start second guessing my life choices."

"I loathe you," JJ scowled, relief dying a swift death. Nauseated disgust filled his stomach as he contemplated the cruel realities of this world.

"I know you do," Minako repeated, and slammed a covered tumbler onto his nightstand with enough force that it shook. She continued, ruthlessly ignoring his pleading for compassion, _Minako, mercy, my head-_ "Now seriously, get up, we have a meeting in an hour and if we break every speed limit in the city we'll make it on time. I'm not being late to work on top of everything else."

Fuck. There was an eighty percent chance she was right about that. He opened his eyes, winced at the sunlight flooding in around his blinds, and glared at the tumbler and the morning devil alike. "You broke my alarm clock to make sure I wouldn't know if you were lying to me."

Minako (fully dressed, hair combed, make up applied, as put together as if she hadn't been going shot for shot with him last night, _how did she do that?_ ) scoffed. "I broke your alarm clock because I have the hangover from hell and you have a spare in the closet. Up. Drink this awful smoothie, get dressed in something that doesn't tell the world we were reliving our college glory days, and let's go."

And then she turned on and left before he could offer another word of protest. 

JJ hated her. 

He also sat up from the floor and drank the godawful smoothie, thick and cloying and sticking to his throat all the way down, the kale made creamy and even more bitter by the raw cling of the eggs, the unexpected heat of pepper and hot sauce that made his guts clench and his body curl in on itself with sheer disgust. 

He heaved, stomach acid and smoothie and what was left of the belly full of liquor he'd downed rising up to the back of his throat and getting swallowed back down when it failed to actually _leave_ his mistreated body. His head throbbed. _Fuck_ , but he hated being hungover. Why did the wonders of alcohol have to become misery the morning after? Why couldn't you go to sleep drunk and wake up sober with no consequences?

 _You could if you paced yourself with water_ , a voice in the back of his mind said. It sounded suspiciously like Mamoru, which was just _great_. Even the voice of his conscience reminded him of Mamoru. 

Mamoru. Who he was going to see at work today. Who he'd completely ignored for the last two days.

_fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> remember folks, getting shitfaced is never the answer.


	3. Chapter 3

There were things in life that people became used to, adapted to, and even thrived in doing. 

Driving with a hangover was not one of them. 

Driving with a hangover at a quarter to seven in Southern California traffic was definitely not one of them, especially when one was breaking the speed limit with a screaming coward taking up shotgun.

"Minako! Minako, Minako, Minako, that truck is getting over it can't SEE YOU -" JJ was screeching from her right. One of his hands was fixed in a white-knuckled grip at the handle bar above his seat, the other clutched at his chest, as if his heart were going to otherwise physically burst out of his chest from fright. The absolute chicken. 

The truck he was yelling about, meanwhile, was getting over just a smidge too slow, and her little red Camry may not have been the fastest, fanciest, or most extreme car in the world, but when she was going ninety-five in a sixty, it was plenty to beat out a slow moving truck getting into the _wrong lane_. 

"I said I've got it! If you wanted to drive you should have said so!"

"I did say so! I said so many, many times! You locked the driver's side door and said 'get in loser'!"

Unfortunately, that did sound like her. 

"Oh, I did do that, didn't I?"

"Yes!" JJ shrieked. This might have been because she'd nearly missed their exit, and had decided to merge across three lanes of traffic in about ten heart racing seconds. It might have been because his life was flashing before his eyes the way the honks of car horns lingered in their ears. Or maybe he was just regretting all of his life choices. 

She was certainly regretting some of hers. She should have dragged him out of bed an hour earlier. Her body couldn't have hated her that much more than it did now, with JJ's voice hitting a glass breaking pitch every other minute like nails scraping down a goddamn chalkboard. Oh the things she did for work. And alcohol. And to avoid talking about her feelings with her wife. 

They made the exit. Traffic started thinning immediately - the zoo and the nearby natural history were pretty much the only major interests on this stretch of the road, and early morning in the middle of the week wasn't exactly peak visitor hours for either location. That was one of the reasons she'd set her staff meeting for this ungodly time. 

JJ stopped screaming. Minako's head stopped throbbing quite so much. The thermoses of black coffee JJ had filled for them stopped praying for survival. 

"I think… I really fucked up with Rei," she said into the quiet. 

"Oh, did our _near death experience_ give you that blinding epiphany?" JJ snapped. 

Minako ignored his tone. He was always bitchy when her perfectly clear driving record was upheld by her exemplary driving technique. 

"It's been days and she's still mad at me, and that means I have to admit that I really fucked up this time. And that I need to apologize. And I am telling you this because as my best friend who isn't also best friends with Rei, you'll tell me exactly how I should-"

"Grovel for forgiveness and swear to go back to driver's ed."

" _Jefferthanial Jonesonburg I am being serious!_ "

"So am I! You just shaved years off of my health with that stunt -"

"Seriously JJ!"

"Ugh, fine!" From the corner of her eye she saw him relinquish his death grip on the handlebar, and twist in his seat to stare at her. "Grovel for forgiveness. I meant that part, at least, you need to actually apologize - and don't ask for what. You know what, Rei is the opposite of subtle, she probably told you _exactly_ what part she was mad about. And then you promise not to do it again and set up a date night to make it up to her."

It was good advice, which was the worst part. He knew her, and he knew her relationship troubles, and he was using that to punish her in the most ruthless way possible: forcing her to fess up to her mistakes and submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known as a fallible human. 

"Yeah, yeah, okay, maybe she did. But still, I didn't think she'd be so mad and - okay, yes, still my fault, but how was I supposed to - by asking her, alright, I get it, stop _looking_ at me with those eyes."

This was the problem with having such a good friend. He just had to lift his eyebrows or twitch his mouth for her to know exactly what he was saying, and even worse, know he was right. 

Horrible. Friendship was the worst thing that could ever happen to someone.

And JJ knew that too, because he opened his mouth. "I say this because I'm your friend who supports you and doesn't want to hear a word about taking my own advice: you're the smartest idiot I know, and avoiding the medicine is worse than just taking it. If you make a joke about bottoming I'll kill you and no jury on the planet will convict me."

Her open mouth snapped shut. 

"You are living the dream. You're gay married to the woman of _your_ dreams, who loves you, likes you, respects you, _and_ is attracted to you. You got the promotion you worked hard for and you're turning thirty with no kids, a house, and almost no student debt. Literally the _only_ thing getting in your way right now is you and also your bad driving which will someday kill you -"

" _JJ -_ "

"I speak only the truth and you know it. Look, speaking as someone who's being the _best man_ for the guy I've been in love with for most of a decade because I was, am, and always will be too chickenshit to admit how I feel, _you don't want to be like me_."

Never mind what she thought before. _This_ was the worst part, this part here, where her best friend said things like this about himself, things that were _true_ , and she can't deny any of them. 

Six years ago she had asked Rei on a date out of a desire to _not_ be like JJ, ruminating in her feelings while the woman of her dreams found happiness with someone. Two years ago he was _her_ Maid of Honor, and she was badgering him to either ask Mamoru to come as his date or find someone else - anyone else - to fall hopelessly in love with. One of the planks in the foundation of her marriage was labeled _don't be like JJ, don't do it bitch_.

"...you're not wrong," she said, finally. "About me and Rei, because fuck you my driving is fine. I do need to talk to her, and apologize, and… grovel, even, because I've been avoiding her. Even if I didn't mean anything with the pandas, I knew _that_ would bother her and I still did it."

"Because?" 

" _Because_ I'm a brat and I didn't want to admit my brilliant plan was maybe a little bit less than brilliant. I was trying to do something cute and loveable and instead I was lucky to avoid the couch, and it stings, okay?"

It was absurd to feel defensive when she was the one who asked _him_ for advice, but whether it was the early morning, the hangover remnants, or the fact that parking is already _impossible_ for some godforsaken reason, defensive was _exactly_ how she felt. 

Which was why she went on the offensive, something that she -

"Why are _you_ so determined to stay stuck on someone you don't have a shot with?"

\- instantly regretted. 

JJ went silent, his face shuttered and blank, exasperated amusement shed like an old skin. 

The worst part was knowing she hadn’t said anything _wrong_ . It was the truth, and what she was sorry about was saying it now, like this, not that she said it all. But she’d been watching him pine over someone oblivious to his interest for most of a decade, and she wanted better for him. She wanted _him_ to want better for himself. 

Her hands tightened on the wheel. 

She purposefully passed up the first parking spot she's seen in three passes. If they're late, they're late, because abruptly, she was _angry_ and not just at herself. She wasn’t just worried and she wasn’t just sad for him, she was actually pretty damn angry, and since they're literally stuck in a car together, she was going to take this chance to just come out with it before JJ could take off and bury himself in birds and lice and animal training and pretending he was completely ecstatic about the man he’s in love with getting married to someone else.

"If I thought you were happy being single and watching him for afar like some doomed regency era crone, I'd keep my mouth shut and stay out of it but we both know you aren't, and newsflash asshole, I love you! You're my best friend and I care about you. You got pissy with me because instead of talking to my wife I got shitfaced drunk and now we're both hungover and miserable, so it's my turn to get pissy at you for getting shitfaced over Mamoru! You've been pining over him for a fucking decade and you've been sad and miserable about it this whole damn time and instead of saying _no Mamoru, I don't think I can be your best man_ , you said yes!"

Her voice was a swell of sound, and when she was done she had to pant for breath. The crackle of her radio was harsh and abrasive in the silence that fell. 

JJ stared, his eyes huge, whites showing all around. He was too shocked to be angry. 

A free parking spot appeared in the corner of her vision and she went for it. Her temples pounded. Her mouth still tasted like her god awful hangover cure. In the span of two minutes she's said everything she's been holding in for years. 

And they haven't even started work.

Christ, they haven't even walked into the office.

Her car jerked to a stop as she hit the break, shaking them both. Her coffee sloshed inside the sealed cup. 

Minako's head dropped back against the headrest.

"I've been watching you pine after him for years and I don't know what that's like. But I do know what it's like to watch you hurt yourself wanting someone you won't even confess to. Being there for him as his friend doesn't mean you have to treat yourself like shit."

Without moving, she unlocked the car. She undid her seat belt. She sighed, swung her legs over the seat, and stood.

"We need to get our shit together, both of us. We're getting too old to be doing this to ourselves."

🦊♥️🐼

The silence in the car remained long after Minako was gone, JJ sitting frozen as the minutes ticked by and he went from late to very late to extremely late, to just plain not present for that meeting. It was ridiculous. It was unacceptable. It was utterly _juvenile_ -

He did nothing to change that fact. 

Did nothing to remove himself from that car, from the silence ringing in his ears like the crack of a gunshot, breaking through every wall, every deception, every pleasant little story he’d told himself year after year, every joke and jab about being a coward, every laughing denial about happenings in his love life, breaking like the breaking of glass, cast into shards that would never fit into their original shape.

He could lie to himself. He could tell himself that Minako was wrong. He could tell himself that he didn’t care about the wedding, that the drinking and the tears, the sobbing and the lamentations, they’d all been something, anything other than proof that he was desperately, terribly unhappy, that love felt as heavy as the world on his shoulders and he was no Atlas fit to stand tall in spite of it. It wouldn’t be anything like convincing, those lies he could tell himself, but he could tell them. 

Minako would even accept them, eventually. Would at least save her breath rather than have the conversation again. 

_He_ wouldn’t accept them, though. Not now. Not with his face rubbed into the mess of his own beating, breaking, bleeding heart, and for a single moment he _hated_ Minako for that. But the moment passed, and he had only himself to hate. 

Wasn’t that just like him, to have nothing and no one but himself?

A fumbling hand found the door to the car, jerked it open so he could tumble out, the morning wind whipping cold and harsh against his face. The sunlight was harsher, without the barrier of the window. The world didn’t quite feel real, fragile as a soap bubble and just as blurry, colors too bright and shadows too deep. It was the hangover, but it was him too, falling apart over a few long needed words. 

That was the problem, was why he couldn’t even summon even a feeble shred of indignation at the way Minako had torn through his every defense without a hint of mercy, face like steel and eyes like fire as they turned on him, and he didn’t know how opening his mouth to spit out the answers she’d been demanding had become shrinking away from the burn of truth, but it had, and she was off flying like a bird to her love while she fell from the sky, denial melted away as neatly as Icarus’ wings.

He was in love and it was unrequited.

Mamoru didn’t love him and that was no one’s fault but his own, a thousand excuses and explanations and justifications boiled down to lone truth. He had never, in all the time he had known Mamoru, told him how he felt, had never shared the way his kindness had made him feel, not once, but over and over and over, in the dorm room they had shared in freshman year, in the apartment they had shared the years after, in the hours after his sister died and he sat alone in a too-small chair feeling like the world should have ended with her and as though his heart, which had always beat in time with hers, was meant to have stopped when his twin’s had. 

He loved Mamoru and part of that love lay in safety, in the familiarity of it, the mapped out edges of that love, the predictability of the sting and the ache that would come whenever he saw him with Usagi, with the sweetness and warmth that would follow watching him smile. Part of it lay in the surety of it, the confidence he felt in not confessing, in hiding away his love in the hallowed halls of his heart, which he wore so openly on his sleeve only because the red bleeding of it was paint. 

Minako wasn’t wrong about _anything_ she had said, because she knew him, like he knew her, like two peas in a fucked up pod, both of them so afraid to be known because it would mean giving up control, but Minako _had_ given up control, and most days he saw her revel in the rewards of it, with the ring on her finger and the house she shared and most importantly the woman she smiled for. 

JJ hadn’t done the same. 

Hadn’t _dared_ too, sure that something, anything, everything, would go wrong, and that surely some love could be a kind of emptiness, a hunger that kept him sharp and watching and wanting and driving forward, that it was better to stay tense at the edge of his seat than to brave the glacier edge of rejection, of loss, of _change_. 

Someone called his name, vaguely familiar, and he waved, and walked, and did not look to see who it had been, not when his thoughts were buzzing and the world was too bright and it wasn’t yet even nine in the morning. 

Anyone he spoke to would be met with the bleeding edges of his smile and he wasn’t _ready_ for that. Even now.

Even now. 

The sky opened as he reached the aviary and the rain fell like the heavens matching his mood.

🦊♥️🐼

Minako strode down the wide walkways of the entrance, circumventing the side entrance staff preferred to use for the smoother, better maintained pathways that the guests used. Every step was punctuated by the click-clack of her heels, the orange straps criss crossing her ankles. 

If she’d been any less focused, she probably would have wobbled this way and that, fell right on her face - it had been years since she’d worn a pair. 

Heels had been quietly evacuated from her closet during the move, when she and Rei had celebrated marriage and the joining of their lives by buying a house together, a place roomier than her little studio apartment, cozier than the condo Rei had been renting with roommates for all the time they’d been dating. She hadn’t missed them - heels might have added some much-needed height at a number of key moments throughout her life, but they’d come with all the aching feet, twisted ankles, and stubbed toes that a lifetime could call for. They were a hallmark of a different time, when she’d had different interests. 

She didn’t like to think of it that way because it made her sound old, but it was true. Heels had been part of a desire to be more feminine than she was, part of the pop princess vision of herself that she’d dreamed up watching Disney Channel original movies on Friday nights and bouncing along to the radio on the way to school, and she hadn’t ever liked them, just the way they completed the look. But she’d shed that dream like an old skin the moment she signed her college acceptance letter, and getting rid of the heels, packing them away with the other junk she didn’t need to move houses with, had felt like that day, fresh and new again.

They were the only shoes she had left at JJ’s house though, and the work shoes she’d worn yesterday were stained with spilled liquor and smelled like it too. She’d need to get them cleaned professionally, and so the heels were all she had.

It was probably some kind of symmetry, honestly. She’d been wearing heels when she first asked Rei out. 

( She remembered everything about that day - the way the sun beat on her back and made the fall of Rei’s long, long hair gleam against the purple of the blazer she’d been wearing, its padded shoulders stiff and broad and straight. How the wind felt blowing in her face, chilling the sweat on the back of her neck. The smile she’d plastered to her face, polished and bright and hiding all the nerves and hope and excitement buried in the pit of her. The way Rei had stared at her, and the slow, warm curl of her lips as she said yes. )

Now she was wearing heels again, speed-walking to the main staff building as fast she dared, hoping to catch Rei before she needed to be in the main conference room for her staff meeting, hoping she could spit the words out without falling flat on her face, literally and emotionally.

A glance down the right side of the hall - empty, everyone in their offices or their meeting rooms or off on their assignments already. A glance down the left side of the hall, and more nothing - coworkers she didn’t want to talk to right now, janitorial staff finishing up with that side of the building. She kept moving down the central path of the hall, lengthening her stride, half-running and wincing at every click-clack-click of her heels on the tiled floor, the sound reverberating in her skull.

A few more steps. Almost there. It wasn’t so late in the morning that Rei wouldn’t be in her office, not when she hadn’t caught sight of her heading down one of the other halls.

She would be in there. She would be. 

The door was open and Minako’s breath was a wheeze of relief, her chest heaving in too quick, too shallow breaths as she burst into the office. 

“Rei!” Was the first word to leave her lips, her wide eyes feasting on the sight of her wife, standing at the side of her desk and digging through her purse. A uniform shirt had never looked so good as it did on Rei, dim light filtering through the office window giving the fabric a soft, touchable look. “I’m so glad you’re -” 

“You didn’t come home last night.” Rei’s reply was curt, an acknowledgement rather than an observation. It took the wind from Minako’s sails and left her scrambling, planned sentences falling to pieces.

“I - what? I mean, no, I didn’t, I was with JJ and - ” She trails off, wincing, and her shoulders scrunched in. Right. She hadn’t even considered how that might make Rei feel. 

Minako stepped deeper into the room, reached for the door knob and clenched her fingers tight on it to stop them trembling. This wasn’t how she’d been planning to start this, but she had to roll with it, keep moving. “I lost track of time, and I should have called you, but - I know we don’t have a lot of time, you’ve probably got a busy morning, but can we talk for a minute?”

“No.” 

And it was so firm, so blunt, so utterly without hesitation, that Minako could only stare in startled silence, the moment stretching out until Rei broke it with a sigh and the soft _zzz_ of her purse being zipped shut. 

“I have a meeting in five minutes, and I spent half the night waiting for you to come home or answer your phone or text me back. I don’t know what you were doing with JJ. I don’t _care_ right now, Minako. You had all night to talk to me. Right now? We’re at work, and I have a job to do here. Whatever revelation you’ve come to, that has you finally standing here in my office instead of slinking around like a kicked dog, it can wait until closing time.”

And then she walked right out, brushing past Minako without so much as another word, and Minako stared at the place she’d been standing, lips parting and shutting soundlessly, stuck - 

“I _do_ need to lock my office,” Rei said shortly, the voice coming from behind her, and Minako moved. 

She wasn’t really conscious of it - wasn’t really conscious of anything, the walk back to her own office happening on autopilot, feet navigating pathways and hands digging for keys without any real thought going into any of it. It wasn’t until she was sitting in her office chair, head in her hands, that she remembered the reason she’d almost gotten her and JJ killed on the freeway, and her head snapped up.

8:03 AM stared back at her, the three clicking over to a four as if to taunt her. 

“Fuck,” she breathed, and tore out of the office without another word, chair left spinning behind her through the gaping door. Her purse bounced against her side, the straps sliding up and down her arm as she ran. The conference room where her staff meeting was being held was in the building across the walkway, she wouldn’t be much more late if she ran - 

And the sky opened up as she left the shelter of the main staff building, rain falling in an unforgiving downpour.

🦊♥️🐼

An hour later, and they were both still soaked. 

Inside the conference room, the gathered team members winced in sympathy as Minako’s hair dripped down her back and politely pretended the shoulders of her white shirt wasn’t so soaked that her bra straps were visible. They ran through the agenda items quickly and efficiently, reporting news when they had any and remaining quiet when they didn’t, letting the meeting end as quickly as possible - it was the only thing any of them could do to help, without a spare shirt to offer.

In the aviary, the keepers excluded from the meeting for the sake of feeding the birds offered JJ a spare towel, and didn’t comment on the squelching of his shoes as he stepped forward to accept it. His hair was flattered to his head with the weight of all that water, and he looked like a drowned rat - neither of them were going to be the one who made him feel worse about his day.

Two hours later, the rain was still pouring, and replacement shirts weren’t helping.

Minako’s spare umbrella was in Rei’s office, and there wasn’t a chance in hell that she was going in there for it. She did her best to duck under tree branches and climbing materials when she could, clutching a clipboard to her chest as she took notes on how well the habitat was holding the rain, if the climbing equipment looked like it would need any adjustments. Her shirt was getting soaked again, and her heels were sinking in the mud. 

The front of JJ’s shirt stunk to high heaven from a trail of bird droppings Pippin had generously deposited in the middle of a behavior check, and it was loose and bubbly enough that he was going to have to let it sit there until he could get it to one of the vets - he might not have been a medical professional, but he knew birds, and he knew _these_ birds, and that level of water content wasn’t normal for their stool. Something was wrong. 

Four hours later, the rain was _still pouring_ , and lunch was a terrible idea.

Minako had no appetite, and the fact that her fries were soggy and her burger was covered in unasked for chili didn’t help. JJ had dropped his tray within two minutes of picking it up, half the tikka masala he was meant to be eating currently decorating the plastic lunch table. They sat side by side in silence, neither of them able to meet each other’s eyes, neither of them willing to say the first word. 

Five hours later, the computers went out. The rest of the day wasn’t much better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> always practice responsible driving, and remember that communication is a two way street. it can't always happen on your timetable.


	4. Chapter 4

By the time six o’clock rolled around and Minako was free for the day, she felt like she’d gone ten rounds with the head of their Western Lowland gorilla troop and gotten sucker punched every single time. The hangover had morphed into a low-grade tension headache, she was ninety percent sure something had gone terribly wrong in that chili, and her feet felt seconds away from going on strike. The only thing keeping her going was the fact that she _needed_ to talk to Rei. 

She didn’t want to let this sit for another minute, and didn’t want to know the consequences that would come if she didn’t fix things, and fast. It was obvious now, as it should have been all along, that stupid prank or no stupid prank, the red pandas _weren’t_ what Rei was upset about, and she’d been wracking her brains all day, spinning her wheels, trying to divine an explanation

Not coming home last night was a part of it, but it wasn’t the whole of it, and neither was her failure to get back in touch, though that part made Minako want to go back in time and kick her own ass for not sparing a second to get out of her head (or the tequila) for long enough to dig her phone out and text Rei. But still, that wasn’t the whole of it, because she’d done both of those things before and neither of them had pissed Rei off like this. It wasn’t even that plus the pandas, because Minako had done things that were a lot stupider than this, and really, it almost felt like there'd been tension building for - 

A flash of red in the corner of her eye, and Minako lifted her head to the window in time to see Rei’s purple umbrella moving towards the parking lot. 

She stared for a moment in frozen shock. Just for a moment. 

“ _Rei!_ "

And then she was off, once again racing from her office (locking the door, this time) and out into the rain, purse clutched to her chest and heels click-clack-slopping through puddles as she raced towards the parking lot, and the purple umbrella bobbing in the rain. 

“ _Rei!_ ”

The rain was worse now than it had been earlier, the storm finally wound up to its peak, and it only took a moment for Minako to go from 'unpleasantly damp' to 'completely fucking soaked', bypassing the simple category of wet altogether. Her bangs were plastered to her face, streaming rivulets of water directly into her eyes, and her shirt clung to her skin, white fabric now fully transparent, her pants chafed at her thighs as she ran, and she paid attention to none of it, fixed on her goal, on that slowly disappearing umbrella that was in the midst of turning a corner. 

And then the umbrella stopped, and Minako didn’t, half-running, half-sliding her way across the rain-slick path to where Rei stood, her red dress blowing in the breeze, sheltered from the storm. She didn't stop until there was barely an arm length between them, her arms clutched to her chest against the cold, soaked to the bone and every inch a drowned rat. 

"Rei," Minako said again, and she was begging, she was pleading. Her voice shook from her chattering teeth as her nerves. "I'm _sorry_ . I'm sorry about that stupid thing with the pandas, and about not coming home last night and not returning your calls and avoiding you _all week_ and everything, okay? And it's not because you're mad at me, it's not because I want things to go back to normal, I'm sorry because I fucked everything up and instead of facing up to it I tried to pretend everything was fine and it's _not_ , and I'm sorry -"

She was crying and the only way she could tell was the warm tracks the tears carved down her frozen cheeks, disappearing into the rain. It would have taken just a single step forward to stand under Rei's umbrella and get out from the cold, but she didn't move. She could only stand there, fingers digging into the fabric of her soaked shirt, shivering and babbling and hoping she wasn't making an even bigger idiot of herself. 

"I _miss_ you. I missed you, and I didn't want to just say it, when it's all my fault, but -"

"What makes it your fault?" Rei asked, and it was a leading question, and usually, usually Minako hated those and the way they made her feel like a misbehaving child brought in front of the principal, but now it was a lifeline and she was drowning. She lifted her eyes from the ground and Rei's own.

"Because I took that promotion, and I didn't tell you. That's the real reason you're mad at me, isn't it?"

Violet eyes widened and Minako nodded even as her shoulders shrank in and her head dropped. It was the only other thing she could think of, the only piece that was left to complete the puzzle, and it was such a stupid thing. 

"I didn't think about it until after you left. I haven't been - I _wish_ I could say I was enough of a genius that I was just being a brat about it, I really didn't-" her voice broke, just as the rain did. A shadow shifted over her, and when again she raised her eyes, it was to the sight of the umbrella being shared between them, and Rei looking away, her eyes avoiding Minako's. 

Minako took the chance to wipe her face, tears and water intermingling, both shoved aside by the curled fingers of her hand. 

"I'm not mad you took the promotion," Rei said finally, after nearly a moment of silence. Her voice was softer than normal, none of the usual commanding bite, a soft hiss that screamed to Minako of warning, and withholding. "I'm proud of you. You earned it, and there isn't anyone on staff who worked harder for it."

The words were hollow - the kind of truth that someone believed but didn't endorse, the ring of a statement waiting for the _but_ to come finish it off. It didn't come. 

It was amazing how alike they were, neither of them wanting to tear off the lids to the boxes they'd packed away in their hearts. 

"But?" She asked, insistent. She continued to wipe at her tears and they continued to fall, and the rain did too, all around them, falling in sheets around the umbrella. 

"But you didn't _tell me_ about it!" And here was the explosion, the outburst, the contents of that box she'd only just realized was there spilling out. "I found out when everyone else did, _when you announced it to the whole zoo_. You went after this great opportunity and you didn't tell me anything, you just took so many shifts we couldn't go on dates and worked late nights on projects you wouldn't tell me about and it went on for weeks, and I started to think, well, fuck that’s it, she's found somebody else -"

" _What?_ " 

"But then, no! It was a promotion! It was good news!" And Rei laughed, like splintering wood in the fire, finally giving way and she turned as if to leave. 

Minako caught her hand before she could complete the motion, knuckles going white with the strength in which she clutched at her hand. The rain may as well have been the sea and if Rei left now she would be washed away. She would drown. Every ounce of that feeling, that desperation, poured into her words -

"Don't go. I'm sorry. Please, tell me now - I'm _listening_ now."

\- and Rei stood still, and she didn’t look back, but she continued. Her flat voice was harsh, words landing like lightning strikes through the storm. 

"It was good news. What was I supposed to do? Get angry at you for going after a good thing? And you stopped with all the extra work, you came home, we started up date night again - everything I was upset about was over. So I tried to get over it, and I _did_ get over it, and when you put that offer out to help you pick the next exhibit, I told myself it was all for the best that I hadn’t brought it up after all, because you’d figured it out on your own and even if you weren’t just asking _me_ , at least you were bringing people in this time.

"I put work in that proposal, Mina. I worked on it, because I wanted us to work together, I wanted us to do this together, and you sat there and let me think this was for real and -”

“And then I told you it was all a joke,” Minako finished, and her voice was a shredded thing, hoarse and dry with regret and fury, all of it aimed at herself for what an absolute ass she’d been. There was a part of her, small and squalling and kicking and saying _I didn’t know how could I know_ but it was a part she kicked down hard, just as she kicked away the fearful little speck that said _she’s mad don’t say anything you’ll just make it worse she’ll laugh_. Rei had opened up her box, Rei had spilled it all out for her to see, Rei was standing right there and there were two roads opened before her now. “I was a fucking idiot, Rei.”

There were excuses. 

There were explanations. 

There were rationalizations and justifications and defenses she could mount, but those were whispers that belonging in the past, in the weeks she’d toiled away, knocking out projects like a beaver whittling away at the trees and never once daring to breathe a word in answer to the whys and whats and wheres she could see building in Rei’s eyes. She had been so afraid to say anything, as if breathing out the words would make her fail, as if sharing her hunger would lessen the pangs and weaken her resolve, and she’d gotten the job but what the fuck was the point if this was how she’d made Rei feel in doing it?

“I was selfish. That’s the truth. I didn’t want to tell you because I was scared that if I said anything about what I wanted it would just - disappear, and I’d be a failure, and I thought, at least if I didn’t tell anyone I wouldn’t have to see the look on your face when I failed. I’m not trying to - it’s stupid. The more I say the more I hear how stupid it all is, but the more I worked the more I missed you and the more I knew it was all my fault and I just kept thinking that I had to make it work. I had to get that promotion. I had to get that title. If I didn’t, what was it all for?”

The ends had to justify the means, and it wasn’t like she’d murdered anyone for the job, but if she’d killed her marriage over it -

“When I got the job, I thought I could just fix everything, and I thought the best way to do it was to do something big. And I knew you love those stupid raccoons -”

“They’re not actually a close relative of the... raccoons,” Rei said, and winced, a red flush painting her cheeks. The words were an echo of an argument they’d had a dozen times over the years, whenever Rei would send a video of some lucky zoo keeper or veterinarian getting to play with work with a red panda and Minako would offer to go out and catch the raccoon that refused to leave their garbage alone to fill the void. 

It made Minako smile, even in the middle of this soul-baring horror. 

“Right, right, they’re not raccoons, they’re ailuridae and morphological similarity is a woefully inadequate means of assigning taxonomy and we really should reinvestigate every species first classified in the eras before molecular phylogenetics were a tool at our disposal, but I didn’t actually… I just meant, I thought if I could get you those red pandas, it would make you happy. And I thought it would be like that stupid newlyweds game you make me watch every Thursday, because I knew you’d propose them, and you’d see how well I know you, and it would be really cute and I -”

She trailed off, shoulders slumped. 

“And I was really being a coward about the whole thing. You deserve better than that, and if you give me the chance I swear I’ll prove I can be better. I’ll go to therapy, I’ll take time off, I’ll call the Smithsonian and tell them there was a mistake -”

“You most certainly will not.” A beat. “Well, you _will_ go to therapy, if you want, but you will not tell the Smithsonian there was a mistake. The whole zoo is excited about that exhibit.”

Another beat. 

“ _I’m_ excited about that exhibit.”

Minako dared to look again at Rei’s face, and found that the flush had yet to leave her cheeks, that though her face was turned away it wasn’t with anger or resignation but the kind of cute bashfulness that her wife _never_ admitted to containing, and felt a flash of hope for the first time since she’d shuffled out of Rei’s office. 

“You are?” 

She had to verify. She had to hear it again, those words, and the implication below. 

“I am. I’m - we have a lot to talk about, still, and we should probably do it out of the rain before you catch pneumonia and my arm gives out, but - no matter how angry I’ve been, I still want to see the red pandas. I still want to work on that exhibit with you. I still want to be _married_ to you, yes, I can read your face too, don't look so relieved.”

It was like the weight of the world had gone from her shoulders. The soft breeze of her relief could have swept Minako right off her feet after the hurricane tumult of her feelings, of their argument, their confession. 

She gave up on wiping her tears and just lunged forward. 

“Minako! Minako don’t you dare hug me, you’re soaking wet - _MINAKO I CAN’T BELIEVE -_ ”

🦊♥️🐼

Seven had long since ticked past on the clock when JJ finally made his way out of the building, having buried himself in as much work as a man could humanly find to get past the sheer amount of awful his day had been. Reports had piled up over the days he’d been out of the office, and his hangover had made looking at his computer screen an exercise in agony he’d had no choice but to grimly see through. 

He wasn’t soaked anymore, but the damp grip of his jeans clinging to every inch of skin on his lower half wasn’t much better. The pink shirt that had been the _only_ one left in his size at the gift shop, when he’d finally accepted that he was going to have to buy a new shirt, was an exercise in humiliation - not because of the color, but because of the cartoon flamingos forming a heart across the from and back. 

It was like the universe was mocking him. 

Well it could take a hike, alright? He _got_ it. He’d _heard_. He was a pathetic loser and even the only best friend he had left - the one he wasn’t helplessly, stupidly in love with - was fed up with how much of a goddamn idiot he was for not just getting over it and moving on with his life. 

He knew. 

Minako hadn’t said anything he hadn’t known, and the whole day, the whole shitty fucking day, he’d done nothing but ruminate on those facts, even as he buried himself in work, even as Pippin defacated on his shirt and then _bit_ him as if it was his fault he was a living human person instead of a tree and that getting shit on was enough to make him jump, even when his computer crashed not once but twice, and the second time in the same instant he tried to save his work. 

He hadn’t even really finished all the work he had left to do, just gotten fed up with the way nothing, not the mundane details he reported every day or the critically important updates for the night and morning staff who would check in on the birds after him to see, dragged his mind away from it all. What was the point of work if it couldn’t take his mind off of things?

What was the point of anything if it couldn’t get his mind off of things?

It was still raining, when muscle memory carried him from the keeper building and down the path to the parking lot, but at least he was dry. Another keeper had taken pity on him earlier, tossed an umbrella from the lost and found his way, and at least the Hello Kitty heads and yellow _hearts_ pattern matched the shitty pink shirt. 

( It had been really, really hard to not just break down in hysterics when he opened the damn thing. He got it, alright, he _got it_. )

The sky was dark. Of course it was - the rain had barely stopped once since it had begun, pouring in sheets and drizzles in turn, and his only luck of the day was the fact that he was leaving in the middle of one of those drizzles. The soft sound of droplets barely denser than mist was a soothing sort of white noise as he made his way to the parking lot, stepping around the larger puddles, gingerly walking through them when there was no other choice. It was quiet, now - most of the animals had been led into the backstage of their enclosures, the dry warmth of those homes luring most of the creatures in. Those animals that were nocturnal were quiet as well, but for the croaking of frogs, the soft hooting of owls. 

He couldn’t even be sure those were a sign of animals in the zoo; the parking lot might have been a concrete plain, but the zoo was an ecosystem in and of itself, the trees, grasses, and bushes surrounding the habitats and exhibits providing a bounty of homes and food. There were all sorts of places for a life to find a way in regardless of what they wanted or had planned. 

Nothing was really in their control. Even the things they thought they had control of, they didn’t. 

A great example of this was walking into the parking lot, feet trailing to the spot he’d stumbled away from the car, and realizing that while it was there, Minako had the keys. 

Because it was Minako’s car. 

Because he’d driven with Minako to work. 

_Son of a bi-_

“JJ? You’re still here?”

It was Mamoru’s voice, coming from behind him, not close but not nearly far enough for him to pretend he hadn’t heard. 

The universe fucking hated him.

JJ allowed himself one long inhale, shuddering with all the pent up feelings he was having a _very_ hard time swallowing down at the realization that on top of everything else he was about to be face to face with the one man he absolutely did not want to talk to today. 

“Jay?”

His voice was nearer, the sound of footsteps registering now, drawing closer. Of course he couldn’t have even a single moment to gather himself, to ready himself for this - confrontation? Interrogation? conversation? He couldn’t imagine what was going through Mamoru’s mind - he’d gotten a best man and then been promptly ignored for days, all his calls and text messages left unanswered. 

( That was a lie. He could very well imagine Mamoru’s thought processes. Could imagine what was sure to be an accurate play by play of his worries, his anxieties, his concerns. He hadn’t come to work because Minako was threatening to drag him back. He’d come because he could plot out exactly how long he could drop from the face of the Earth before Mamoru would come after him, and he’d taken exactly as long as he could get away with. 

It wasn’t kind. It wasn’t right, knowing how it would hurt Mamoru to be ignored and doing it anyway. 

He’d done it anyway. He wasn’t ready. 

Minako was right. Fuck her.)

But there wasn't anywhere to go, anything to do but clench his hands around the hearts-covered-umbrella and his cellphone, start an equally long, slow exhale of all the air he'd drawn into his lungs, and turn to face his doom. 

The ground slipped out from under him as he did, a puddle JJ hadn't realized he was standing in making its presence known in an act of vindictive water physics. That air he'd planned to calm himself with escaped in a frazzled, _"Fuck!"_ as he pinwheeled, legs spreading in a desperate attempt to regain his center of balance. Mamoru shouted in concern and there was the sound of his rushing footsteps as he bolted to help. 

Louder than all of that, loud in the way that all such straws were as they broke the camel's back, was the sound of his phone screen shattering as it landed face down on the wet asphalt. 

"Son of a bitch," he said to himself, staring, staring, _staring_ at his phone and the sprinkle of glass that had been his phone screen. It was like the world had slowed down. His mind was for a moment, utterly blank with disbelief. That hadn't happened. That could _not_ have happened. 

He blinked, less than even a split second of darkness, and his phone still lay there, a pile of useless, broken shit.

" _Son of a_ -"

And Mamoru was there, then, as the slowdown of shocked disbelief and fraying temper became an eruption. 

"Jay, holy shit are you alri-"

"- _bitch!_ No! No, I'm not alright! Fuck! _Fuck!_ "

He'd never been a violent man or even an angry one but fuck if not for the fact that Minako's was the only car around he would have been kicking some tires. The wrath of the day - the frustration, the irritation, the anger, the self-loathing, all of it - had come to a frothing boil and the last person in the world JJ wanted to witness it was the only one around to catch an eyeful. 

JJ threw the umbrella and its mocking hearts to the ground, and whirled on Mamoru, who stepped back hurriedly, a picturesque look of ' _oh shit_ ' contorting his face. 

" _You_."

"M-me?" Mamoru squeaked, and on most any other day the hilarity of the sound would have soothed JJ's upset, would have had him cracking a smile and exhaling away the anger, wiping his face smooth of worry and saying any and everything to vanquish Mamoru's worries. 

But not today. 

" _I can't be your best man._ "

There. He'd said it. He'd said it and it was over and the talking was done and -

"What? Wait, _what_? Why not?! Is it something I did? Is it something I said?!"

That… wasn't what was supposed to happen. No. It didn't matter that Mamoru was absolutely the self-doubting, self-loathing type at his core, years of loneliness and unwanted isolation often snapping at the heels of his thoughts, driving spirals of _it's your fault_ in his mind, he wasn't supposed to be ask for an explanation because JJ didn't want to give him one because JJ was a coward because-

"No! It's not your fault, okay -"

"Then no, it's not okay! You're my best friend! Why don't you want to -"

" _Because I wish I was your boyfriend instead!_ "

Silence fell, and never had it been so loud. JJ breathed, great panting breaths as he tried and failed to rein himself in. Tears clung to his lashes and he blinked them back, swearing to himself that he wasn’t about to add to the humiliation of this by crying on Mamoru on top of everything else. The day had been bad enough - he didn’t need to add another layer of awful to it all. 

Mamoru had yet to speak, and JJ was too scared to look at him for fear of the anger, the disgust, the confusion - 

They’d lived together so many times and for so long and he’d never once said a thing about his feelings, and Mamoru was surely looking back on that time in their lives and rewriting it all, rethinking so many moments, piecing together a puzzle JJ had barely been able to hide. There was being bi bros and then there was finding out said bro had been attracted to you all along and surely that made everything different and awkward and he was never going to want to speak to him again and - 

A hand rested on his shoulder and long fingers curled over it gently. He was shaken, a light motion with hardly any force behind it, the way one might scruff an overwrought kitten. 

“Jay, would you just look at me, please?”

Mamoru’s voice was soft, and kind, but his voice was _always_ soft, it was _always_ kind, that was why he was so good with the animals, why he was especially so good with the baby animals, soft and kind and just the right amount of firm, that said _I’ll enjoy some nonsense with you, but only so much_. That voice didn’t mean he was feeling soft and kind, only that he was projecting it, and JJ -

JJ was too afraid. He remained silent, his face angled to the ground, eyes low. He shook his head and half-heartedly wished that Mamoru would just go, that the earth would swallow him, that lightning would strike him down where he stood, that - 

the hand on his shoulder, the hand that was solid and warm even through the damp of his shirt would stay there.

The earth did not swallow him and neither did lightning strike. The hand on his shoulder remained where it was, firm and grounding. It was the other hand that moved, catching gently under his chin, four fingers curled under to just barely brush against his throat in soft, barely there motions, the length of his thumb and warm base of his hand as solid as the hand on his shoulder. Mamoru lifted his head, and JJ's gaze rose with it, looking from the ground to Mamoru's feet, the length of his legs, the trim cinch of his waist, the breadth of his shoulders, the deep blue of his eyes. 

JJ had always loved those eyes, not for the color but the warmth. The color was beautiful of course - the shade of blue you saw in pictures of far-off, deep oceans, unfathomable depths and mysterious currents - but it wasn't what mattered. Mamoru's eyes could have been the bright green of new leaves or the rich brown of fertile soil or the pale grey of storm clouds, and JJ would have still found them lovely, because they were Mamoru's eyes. 

Still filled with warmth. Still filled with affection. Still looking at him with that same kindness, as if nothing had been said and nothing had changed and he weren't a freak who'd been silently obsessed with his best friend for years.

No, he realized, just as Mamoru opened his mouth. There was a difference there - it was just a subtle one, eyes still slightly wide, dark brows still lifted. 

"I'm not angry," he began, and his fingers had not stopped their slow movements, stroking the soft skin of his throat as soothing some unruly creature, some frightened animal. JJ supposed the shoe fit. "I'm not disgusted, or uncomfortable. or scared, or whatever it is you're thinking about, okay? You hear me, Jay? I need to know you're hearing me."

"I hear you," he forced out, hyper-aware of the motion of his throat, the flex of his Adam's apple, the pad of Mamoru's fingers brushing against it. He could hear him. He didn't know if he could believe him, but he was hearing him.

"Good," Mamoru breathed, and his lips curved in an impossible smile. "Usako said she thought you loved me. You know, in the romantic way, not the platonic life partner way."

He felt his spirit leave his body, the shock was so great. His throat spasmed and Mamoru's fingers were still there, warm against it 

"Mhm," Mamoru answered as if he'd spoken words, a soft hum of sound. "That's what I said, but she's joked about it for years and years and now I guess it's because she was seeing things a lot more clearly than I was. Why didn't you ever say anything?"

JJ was too caught on the words _Usako said_ to respond, mind whirling, scrambling to understand. The words are clear, utterly straightforward with no way to misinterpret them but also _what in the name of fuck?_ How could she know? How could Mamoru's _fiance_ know that he was in love with him!

"She knew?" he demanded in strangled horror, ignoring the question. 

Now Mamoru's expression turned pitying, and he released him, hands falling to his sides. JJ resented it for a moment, missing the warmth as the chill of the damp air rushed back to that cool that warmed skin. "Usako knows everything, as long as it doesn't have to do with math, chemistry, or grammar."

JJ loves this man but in about sixty seconds he's going to strangle him. He has to know what he's doing, right? Right?

"Mamoru. _Please._ What do you _mean_ that Usagi told you I was in love with you? _Usagi_ , your fiance, who you have been in a relationship with for years, told you that I was in love with you -”

“Last year,” Mamoru confirmed, and his shoulders sagged, some of the lightness of his tone dropping away. “I told her she had to be kidding me, because there was no way you’d hide something like that from me.”

It is entirely left unspoken how wrong that was, and JJ regrets, viscerally, that he had been the one to bring them back to this point. He should have kept his mouth shut. 

“I,” he began, only to stop. His own shoulders slumped. His gaze fell, as he tried to think of what to say, even as Mamoru continue to speak. 

“She noticed it a long time ago. I certainly never did, and maybe I should have. But I was sure you’d know you could tell me anything.”

Fuck. He would have preferred being stabbed, actually. JJ stepped back, rubbing his elbow with one hand, resisting the urge to cross his arms defensively. A part of him wanted to fall back on the old standby - cursing Minako and the thought she’d put in his head, but she wasn’t the one who spit out the secret of nearly a decade in a moment of frustration. That was all on him. 

He’d had no plan, and he was paying for it now. 

“This is different,” he tried. 

Mamoru’s retort was an instant, “ _How?_ ”

“Because you’re engaged!”

“I haven’t always been engaged!”

“You were in a relationship before that!”

“You’ve known me longer than Usako has!”

“We were _roommates_!”

“That doesn’t have to do with anything, Jay!”

“It has to do with everything! What was I supposed to do if saying something ruined us? Was I supposed to just spit out my feelings and ruin everything we had just because -”

“Who said it would have ruined anything?” Mamoru demanded, and JJ’s teeth clacked together with how swiftly his jaw snapped shut. He stared, and he _knew_ his eyes were wide and round with surprise, sure that he looked like a tree frog, all eyes and not enough face, and he couldn’t bring himself to care. 

“You - you don’t feel the same way I do,” he said, and the stab at his heart was less than the tight desperation threatening to sink in, cruel hope reaching in like talons of broken glass. 

“You never gave me a _chance_ to decide that,” Mamoru countered. “You never told me. You never - what if I _did_?”

“But you _don’t_ . And you’re getting married and it doesn’t matter, that’s why I wasn’t going to tell you, that’s why I agreed to be your best man in the first place, because you’re getting married to someone you love and all I had to do was keep these feelings buried deep until I died! You _don’t_ feel the same way, Mamoru. You don’t.”

He couldn’t. He couldn’t possibly. 

And maybe Mamoru saw his desperation or maybe he just understood, because frustration on his face fell away, and he looked to the side, sweeping a hand through his hair. He exhaled, looking suddenly tired, as if all the energy had washed away from him. 

“I don’t,” he agreed, and it was the fall of the guillotine, the swing of the axe. “But I could have.”

A punch to the stomach would have been kinder than those words, gentler than the force of them. JJ could not find the words. 

“You’re my best friend. You’re funny and generous and the first real friend I ever made. You bought me flowers when I told you about my parents’ anniversary, and offered to drive me to the cemetery even though it was five hours away. You still do. How could you think I would let anything - _anything_ ruin us?”

The words hung in the air for a moment, the weight of them, the binding thread of their friendship finally drawn taut, as though the faintest twitch in the wrong direction would finally snap it.

“Because I just _did_ ,” JJ rasped, and the tears that he had managed to blink away had forced their way to the surface again. It was ridiculous - he was ridiculous, they were ridiculous, standing in the parking lot at work, a broken phone at their feet and a locked car behind them, a street light illuminating their faces and casting stark shadows all around them. On the verge of tears over something that was and always had been his own fault. “You can’t tell me you’ll ever look at me the same. That you’ll talk to me the same way, that you’d have asked me to be your best man if you knew.”

“Of course I wouldn't have!" Mamoru said sharply, the silken kindness and soft hurt in his voice exchanged for unyielding steel. "Because I would have known it would hurt you and that's the last thing I want! I hurt you! I asked you to be my best man because I am getting married to the most wonderful, amazing woman in the world, and I wanted my best friend to be there and be happy for me, not to be there hurting and miserable -"

The sense of fracturing was so total that for a moment JJ was convinced that his bones had simply snapped underneath him. It wasn't until his voice rang out across the parking lot that he realized they hadn't. 

" _I am not miserable!_ I am _happy_ for you, I am _delighted_ , I am _over-fucking-joyed_ that you are getting married! Usagi makes you happy! Usagi makes you smile! Usagi makes you like a neon light every time she walks into the room and you have been happier and warmer and more confident than I have ever seen you in the time that you two have been dating! You hummed wedding songs for a week after she said yes! I'm sorry I didn't tell you, I'm sorry I hurt you, and my _jealousy_ might be eating me alive but your wedding doesn't make me miserable!"

He had thrown his arms out, no longer half hugging himself, no longer shrinking under the weight of his feelings, but moving with all of the wonderful, awful things he felt. 

Mamoru took a half-step back, surprise rounding his eyes, and JJ had followed him before he was consciously aware of considering it, a pointing finger thrust at him.

Maybe none of this made sense. Maybe it was unbelievable, maybe Mamoru would think he was lying, that the secret he'd kept for so much of their friendship meant he couldn't trust JJ to ever be honest about his feelings again but this was the truth in its most sincere fashion. 

"In the back of my mind I've been burning up with envy, thinking of all the times I could have said something, anything, so it would be me with that ring on my finger, but I've never, ever begrudged you and Usagi your happiness. I _am_ happy for you. Being sad for my own wants doesn't mean I'm not. If you can't believe anything else I say, fine, but believe _that_. I've spent so long keeping this secret because I was afraid it would ruin everything, but all it was doing was ruining me. That's why I can't be your best man. Not because I'm not happy for you. But because I want to treat myself as well as you and Minako treat me."

It was freeing, in the worst and best way, to say it. To put it in those terms - that he had been treating himself badly, that he had been hurting himself - was beyond embarrassing; it made him feel small and stupid and exposed, a light shone on all his most delicate and vulnerable parts.

It made him feel weak. 

Mamoru had always made him feel like that was okay. To be weak, to stop smiling, to break down and cry. 

"I don't think I'll ever stop loving you. I don't even know if I want to try, not if you don't ask me too. I might have been - I might still be being - immature and over-dramatic and emo about this whole thing but loving you isn't some sickness making me unhappy and I don't need a cure. I'm what's been making me unhappy, not my feelings for you, not you asking me to be your best man, just me."

He smiled at Mamoru then, aware that it was a pale copy of the real thing, and also aware that for the first time in ages he wasn't hiding anything behind it. None of the old whirling thoughts crossed his mind, the worry that his smile was too warm or too soft or too broad, that he was showing too much, that someone might take one look at him and _know_ , the way Minako had years before. Smiling wasn't a mask anymore, and the only thought he had was that he wanted to smile. 

At Mamoru, the way he almost always wanted to smile at Mamoru. 

"I already bought your wedding gift," he confesses, and lifts his hand, not to grasp Mamoru's chin and replicate the moment, but to brush away the tears falling from those soft eyes. "It's a surprise of course, I won't tell you what it is, but I bought it the day we went looking for.that ring you proposed with. Anyone with half a brain could tell you she was going to say yes, and I knew exactly what I wanted you two to have."

Mamoru swallowed roughly and JJ felt the motion of it from where his hand rested on his cheek, and he worried, for a moment, that he'd said too much, gone too far, but then -

"Did you really?"

\- and he felt his smile widen. 

"Really. Come on, a Mamo and Usa wedding? Of course I knew what to get you."

There was a quiet sniff, and then, "And you really won't tell me?"

"I really won't tell you."

"You're a jerk, you know?"

"Yeah, the worst. But - you still love me, right?" And maybe it was a risk to ask, but -

His hand was captured, held gently, pulled from Mamoru's wet face. It wasn't released, not then. 

"Of course I do. You think being in love with me changes that? You've been my best friend almost a third of my life - I might not be in love with you yet, but I still love you."

And _then_ his hand was released, as Mamoru wiped at his own face with the cuff of his sleeve. 

"Come on. You need a ride, don't you? I can give you a lift."

They were halfway to Mamoru's car when the word _yet_ finally clicked. 

" _What do you mean yet?_ "

"Well, there's still a few months left before the wedding so -"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you're honest, things can work out.


	5. Chapter 5

"- and then I said, 'I  _ am _ helping! Who else is documenting all this!' and she threw a grape at me!" 

The lunch room was bustling with staff even with it being a quarter to one and lunch for most of them ending at the hour, but Minako and JJ had managed to claim their usual table without any fuss, and no one had a move to join them either. It paid to be creatures of habit - there wasn’t a single person on staff who thought joining them would be a good idea. 

Considering the volume at their table, that was really all for the best. 

“You’re lucky that all you got out of that was a grape to the face,” JJ laughed. His lunch had long-since been abandoned, the remaining half of his philly cheesesteak left to the elements as he cackled over the stories Minako was sharing. “I can’t believe that after all that work you didn’t want to get your hands on one of those red pandas.”

It had been two weeks since that disastrous rain storm, and a pair of red pandas had arrived a week before to a zoo bursting with excitement over their arrival, a veterinarian smugly satisfied with getting to perform their first check up, and a curator under siege from keepers eager to explain exactly how well the exhibit would fit into their usual rounds. The chaos had started to die down on the staff side of things, now, but it was only getting wilder on the public side, with guests daily asking after the opening date. 

JJ, who was perfectly happy with his flock of tropical birds (especially now that they were once more lice-free and bacterially balanced), had spent this time laughing his ass off at each and every new twist and turn in their care that Minako presented him with. It was all fun and games as long as  _ he  _ wasn’t responsible. 

And speaking of which - 

“It’s a good thing,” he said, voice softening, “You know, that she’s throwing grapes at you again. You two were really going through it for awhile.”

“Does it say something about my love life that things are going  _ well _ when Rei’s throwing grapes at me?” Minako asked, and though her tone was still amused, there was an undercurrent of vulnerability there, a reminder that matters improving did not mean they had been forgotten. 

"My high school English teacher would say something metaphorical about her  _ Grapes of Wrath  _ -" Minako booed, and he shut up until she was done, careful to look as bored and unimpressed as was humanly possible so she stopped sooner. He resisted the urge to ask 'you done yet buddy' as snidely as humanly possible, and felt he deserved a medal for the effort. "But really, I think it just says that when things are good, you two are playful. And taking pictures instead of rescuing Rei is the  _ definition _ of playful."

Minako threw a french fry at him, and JJ only pointed a finger at it. 

"Point made. Thank you."

"Point  _ not _ made! You make it sound like I abandoned her to some horrible fate!"

"Didn't you?"

"She was being climbed on by red pandas! A quarter of the staff are literally offering bribes to be in the position she's pictured in! It was the cutest thing I've ever seen!"

It was true. The pictures sitting abandoned on Minako's phone depicted a giggling Rei at the mercy of their pair of red pandas in blatant denial of typical zoo policy. She was crouching, clearly having been examining the conformation of one of them (JJ still couldn't tell them apart), and the other had taken the opportunity to climb atop her and was perching on her back, poking its head over her shoulder.

It was indeed the cutest he'd ever seen Rei, and that included her wedding day.

Still, he couldn't just admit that to Minako. 

“She looks like she’s being menaced,” he said seriously, biting his lip to keep from smiling. “Can’t you see the utter terror in her eyes? Truly, your playful spirit abandoned your wife to endless suffering.”

“She said she was happy!”

“Didn’t she say they stank, too?”

“Like I said, she said ‘they stink! But I’m happy! But they stink! But I’m happy!’ over and over, who am I to ruin her happiness?”

“Her wife?”

“That means it’s my job to protect that happiness at all costs,” Minako said piously, fist to her chest, eyes to the sky - or, well, the roof of the lunch room. “Even from her own wishes.”

“That sounds like something a serial killer would say,” JJ pointed out, and was struck with another french fry in response. 

“You’re just mad because you’re single - wait, shit,” Minako’s face fell, even as JJ’s own split with a dolphin’s own grin, mocking and satisfied all at once. “I forgot. I can’t believe I have to find something else to tease you about!”

“It’s for the best,” It was JJ’s turn to be pious now, smugly satisfied. “Your material was getting old anyway.”

A little sigh, because she could hardly protest that one, and there was a moment of silence as they each took a few more bites of their meal. Time was ticking down, after all, until it was time to get back to their responsibilities. But then - “You want to get dinner? Give me a chance to try some new jokes?”

“Because  _ that’s _ an attractive invitation,” JJ snorts, “When, tonight?”

“Not tonight - it’s Thursday, Rei and I started a standing date night on Thursdays, remember? How’s tomorrow work for you?”

“No can do - the, ah, the first group date is tomorrow - how’s Saturday?” A little flush crawled up his cheeks, and Minako pounced on it - metaphorically, that was, her brows rising, her eyes brightening, as she leaned in close, the most wicked smile on her face. 

“The day after your date, huh~ So you think it’s going to go that well?” 

“I could be trying to get moral support for when it all goes wrong.”

“Yeah, but you’re not. You’re looking to brag about your hot date. Soooo, go on, brag! Tell me what’s going down! You haven’t even told me how it went last week.”

JJ’s flaming red cheeks had not cooled even slightly. “It went - well. We went and got dinner, just Mamoru and I, and we talked about things that were - you know, not work, not -”

“Shitty day breakdown-related?” Minako offered helpfully. It was her turn to be pelted by french fries.

“Exactly. And it was  _ good _ , it was - you know, we were nervous for a minute, but then it was just the two of us hanging out, and it turns out going on a date with your best friend is a lot like  _ hanging out _ with your best friend. When I dropped him off, Mamoru said it was like we’d been dating the whole time without ever realizing it -”

“Which is maybe thirty percent sad and seventy percent hilarious,” Minako noted. 

JJ rolled his eyes. “That’s what Usagi said. That’s why she picked bowling for tonight - we’ve never tried bowling outside of the yearly staff outing -”

“Ugh, don’t remind me - being forced to spend an evening with the whole team, Metallia’s  _ Team Building For Dummies  _ playlist blaring on all the speakers, alcohol formally banned because work pays for everything - “ They made identical faces of disgust. “And Usagi’s such a klutz, too!”

“She’s not that clumsy,” JJ defended, and was grateful that he didn’t believe in hell, because he surely deserved to drop there for that whopper. “And even so, we’re not in some dorky bowling league, we’re using the bumpers like mature adults -”

“You mean seven year olds -”

“- who are just bowling for fun and the highest score, not to prove how much we hate ourselves,” He concluded firmly. He was not looking at her face, which would have definitely communicated thoughts and feelings. “Next week, Usagi and I are going for lunch and shopping in Downtown Disney. It’s going to be great.”

“It is,” and alright, maybe he looked at Minako for a second at that and caught sight of her smile, genuinely fond and warm, rather than mischievous. “It’s going to be great. And if it's not, and one of you hurts another, I'll break your legs. All of your legs, I mean, not just yours JJ."

"Why break any legs at all?!"

Minako scoffed. "Because if you don't have your legs to worry about, what's to keep you from getting stupid and breaking hearts? This way, you know you won't just be  _ sad _ if you fuck up, you'll be sad with broken bones."

The worst part about that was the fact that it made a hell of a lot of sense. 

"Please do not break my legs."

"Easy enough! Don't break any hearts!"

"Yeah, because  _ that _ isn't putting pressure on a new relationship," he complained, but he was smiling still. Before she could respond, he decided to just rip the bandage off. "I decided to be his best man after all."

"You  _ what _ ?!"

"It turns out, there isn't a role for 'person who's dating the groom and bride' in a wedding, so… it's going to be okay. Even if things don't work out and you break all of our legs… it's going to be alright."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's all folks! No more end note advice I'm afraid, just a lot of gratitude - to all of you for reading, to SmokingBomber for being the best beta and collab partner a person could ask for, and to everyone who helped me with this fic along the way. The ending might not be the most realistic, but 2020 sucked, and someone ought to be having a good time.
> 
> [SB note: There's ~~a monster~~ an omake at the end of this ~~book~~ fic.]


	6. Omake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ~omake~
> 
> when jj fell in love with mamoru, aka 12 years ago :D

**Author's Note:**

> communication is necessary. avoidance will only make the problem worse.


End file.
